


The Same Measure

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26066116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: The Winter Soldier was never allowed to stop unless an injury was too grievous.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Comments: 33
Kudos: 125





	The Same Measure

This never would have happened if the asset were wearing the combat vest.

But they’re in Apatzingán and it’s ninety-eight degrees now, at sunset, and the team had to dress as civilians to avoid detection from the cartels. Rumlow could have made the asset wear his body armor under the disguise—the dossier _said_ to make him wear it underneath and Pierce will probably shoot Rumlow himself once they’re back—but he was already in long sleeves to hide the prosthetic and his hair was dripping with sweat and what good would he be on the mission if he got dizzy with heat stroke?

What good is he now with a gash in his chest deep enough to see ribs?

The cartel wasn’t supposed to have frag grenades. The dossier said they had flashbangs. It’s bad intel. It’s not Rumlow’s fault. 

Not that anyone will care. He’ll be the idiot who got the Winter Soldier killed. Decades from now, STRIKE commanders will scare new recruits with stories of how many months it took to get all Rumlow’s viscera out of the grout lines in whatever cell they used when they gutted him.

“Brock?” Rollins asks. His voice shakes. He’s scared shitless. Everyone is.

Except the asset, who stares down at the gory mess that was once his torso and then calmly starts off toward the gun rack at the back of the van.

It’s enough to break Rumlow out of his panic. “Sit the fuck down.” He grabs the asset by the shoulder and throws him to the floor. “You’re not going anywhere. Jackson. Harris. Blackwell. Get back out there. Same plan as before, you’ll just have to manage without the asset.”

He ignores their horrified glances and the twist in his own stomach. They’re expendable and the asset isn’t. If the mission fails, he may get his ass reamed, but he’ll be breathing at the end of it.

“Vasquez, get me the first aid kit.”

The asset stares up at Rumlow from the floor, brows furrowed. “I’m supposed to lead them,” he says, barely audible over the slam of the van doors behind them. “The briefing said—”

“The briefing said I’m in charge,” Rumlow snaps. He grabs the tattered remains of the asset’s shirt as he kneels, ripping them away. “Do you want me to tell Pierce you questioned me?”

The asset falls silent. The edges of the wound are red and inflamed. There are still bits of shrapnel sticking out of skin and tissue. The ribs are silver, metal. They must have to be on his left side to support his prosthetic without snapping. Rumlow wonders if there’s bone beneath it or if they replaced his ribs outright. He wonders how much the asset can feel in his chest.

There’s no bleeding now. The asset’s accelerated healing must have kicked in, but the shrapnel is keeping the wound open. Rumlow unscrews his canteen and pours the water over the wound. His free hand is on the asset’s opposite shoulder to hold him steady if he flinches, but the flinch never comes. Rollins hands over his own canteen to repeat the process, and then Vasquez’s.

The asset’s face around the mask is flushed by the time Rumlow’s digging out shards with the kit’s tweezers. Rumlow’s not sure if it’s from heat or pain or—shit, fever? Can the asset get infections? None of his files ever mentioned sepsis. No one else has been idiotic enough to get him hurt this bad, probably.

Instinctively—stupidly—Rumlow lays his hand on the asset’s forehead. As if that will tell him anything. The asset’s radiating heat, skin damp with sweat, and his eyes go confused and slightly crossed as he tries to stare up at the hand on his head.

“There’s a thermometer in the kit,” Rollins says, and Rumlow pulls his hand away.

The asset lies still as they stitch up the wound. He moves to get up once the bandages are taped in place, but Rumlow snaps at him to stay down and after that, he doesn’t try again. They give him what’s left of the water in the van and an MRE. Maybe that’ll help him heal faster. Maybe there’ll be no trace of the injury at all by the time they’re back in the US. There’s no fever. No sign of anything gone wrong except for stitches they can pick out before the medics take him if the wound closes in time.

And there’s the strange stare the asset’s giving him, but that can be dealt with. Rumlow will just order the asset not to mention anything amiss in his mission report, threaten to let Pierce know about some grievous error the asset committed if he tries to tell.

The asset will be fine. _Rumlow_ will be fine. Maybe the poor bastards he sent back out won’t be, but better them than him.

*

“Hold still,” Rumlow orders, squeezing his nails into the asset’s arm.

Acid-spewing robots. What kind of tech company makes acid-spewing robots, even if they deal in weapons of war? That can’t possibly be as effective as drones. But that’s what they sent out, and now Rumlow’s stuck trying to remember enough chemistry to figure out how to counteract what’s eating through the asset’s wrist before it reaches the veins.

Milk. Milk breaks down acid, right? Yeah, great. If they actually _had_ any around, that might be a viable plan. But probably not.

He pours water over the wound for now. That has to be better than nothing. The asset hitches a breath through clenched teeth, his fingers spasming.

Rumlow’s never seen the asset show pain before. He’s never seen the asset move slow enough to get hit by anything short of an explosion before either. It’s concerning.

But what’s he supposed to tell the techs? _Hey, maybe turn the voltage you put in his brain down a few watts, it’s fucking up his reaction time?_ They’d just blame Rumlow. Might even demote him.

“Mercer’s bringing the first aid kit,” he says, trying to calm his own nerves more than anything. “We’ll get this stopped and wrapped up. And you’d better move faster once you get back in there, or Pierce will want to know why.”

The asset nods, shoulders sagging.

*

They found Bucky not far from the shore where he left Steve.

Sam explains it once Steve wakes in the hospital. Steve had hurt Bucky nearly as badly as Bucky hurt him on the helicarrier, and being pinned under steel beams and hauling Steve out of the water hadn’t helped. He’d only made it about a mile away before collapsing.

He’s in a SHIELD hospital run by the skeleton staff remaining in all the upheaval. Nat said it was the only way to ensure he wouldn’t be arrested. Steve still insists on getting him out as soon as he’s stable enough to move. He can’t trust that some nurse or doctor won’t put Bucky under and then hand him back to his captors.

Bucky looks at him warily when Steve tells him it’s time to go. Fear and curiosity and other emotions Steve can’t name play across his face. He lies back in the hospital bed and for a moment, Steve thinks he’ll refuse to leave. But he just rubs his cheek once against the pillow, and then he pushes back the sheet and gets out of the bed.

He’s quiet on the ride back to Steve’s apartment. He’s quiet for a long time.

Steve doesn’t know what to _do._ He’s had a hard enough time dealing with life in the modern world, and he wasn’t coping with seventy years of torture on top of that. At least when Steve woke up, there was SHIELD. There was an alien invasion not even than two weeks after he defrosted. He could throw himself back into battle. Help people. Have _purpose._

But SHIELD was HYDRA and Bucky’s been their slave for longer than he was himself, and Steve doesn’t know what he can offer him.

Tony gives them a month before he calls.

“How is he?” Tony asks.

Steve rubs at his eyes. “I think better?” Bucky still sleeps with his door locked on the rare occasions he sleeps at all. He never speaks first. Never takes the first bite, never turns on the TV. But sometimes he mentions things that he couldn’t have learned from the Internet. Sometimes the tension seeps out of him when he’s at the table or in the living room and he looks like the Bucky Steve used to know. “He—he’s getting better.”

“Good. That’s good.”

There’s a pause.

“You can say no,” Tony says. “Barnes is the most important thing right now, I get that.”

“But?”

“HYDRA’s getting bolder, Cap. We backed them into the corner and they’re throwing everything they’ve got. And Natasha’s tied up in these congressional hearings. We could use the help. And if your friend knows anything that could help to track them down—”

“I don’t know if he remembers.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know if he wants anything to do with it.”

“Okay,” Tony repeats. Steve realizes this is the longest conversation they’ve ever had without some sort of quip. It’s strangely touching, almost uncomfortably intimate.

“I’ll ask him,” Steve says. “And if he can’t—I’ll find a way to be there. We’ll work around it.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Cap. If you need time, both of you—”

“If I didn’t push myself, I’d never get out of bed.”

Bucky’s in the bedroom, studying Steve's sketchbook. It’s open to a pencil drawing of Steve’s mother, and Bucky’s running his fingers down the lines, too lightly to smudge the graphite. He’s just staring.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky looks up, back straight.

“The Avengers could use our help. They’re not SHIELD. They’re not HYDRA, I promise. If you can’t—”

“I can.” He says it loud and fast. “I can do it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” There’s force in Bucky’s voice. He sounds like himself. It’s the first time he’s sounded like himself since he got here. “I want to do this. Please.”

Steve nods. Relief sinks through him—finally something to occupy them, finally a purpose—and he hates himself for it.

*

“You ready?” Sam asks.

Bucky nods. He moves to pick up his luggage from the coffee table, but his hand slips away as soon as he makes contact. He glances back toward the bathroom. “Can I—”

“Go ahead,” Steve says.

Sam waits until the bathroom door is shut to speak. “You’re sure he wants this?”

“I told him he could say no. I’ve told him that every day, about everything.” Steve runs a hand through his hair. He feels defensive although he knows he shouldn’t. Bucky asked for this. “This is the first thing he’s shown any enthusiasm for. He pleaded with me to let him. Should I have told him no?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I just—”

There’s retching in the bathroom. Bucky cries out.

Steve’s at the door in a second. There’s blood and vomit in the toilet, blood on Bucky’s chin. He’s pale, shaking.

“I’m sorry!” The words are thick and more blood spills out.

Now Steve’s shaking too.

Blood splatters onto the floor. On Bucky’s hands. On Steve’s hands, because Steve’s holding onto Bucky. “It’s okay, Buck, I’ve got y—”

“Open your mouth,” Sam orders, and Bucky’s jaw drops. He stops trembling. HYDRA conditioning. Steve feels about to vomit himself.

“It’s not internal bleeding,” Sam says. “Okay? Just breathe.” 

Steve hadn’t realized he’s stopped breathing as well.

“You bit your tongue,” Sam continues, his hand on Bucky’s chin. “You almost bit through it.”

“I was trying not to be sick and I could feel it coming and I tried shutting my mouth as hard as I could but my tongue got caught—”

Every time he speaks, he bleeds. Steve can’t help himself; he pushes Sam’s arm out of the way and puts his own hand over Bucky’s mouth.

“That needs stitches.” Sam closes the lid of the toilet and Steve guides Bucky to sit down on it. “I know how fast you guys heal, but your tongue moves too much. There’s too much chance it’ll heal out of place.”

Bucky shakes his head, breaking free of Steve’s hold. “We don’t have time. They’re waiting—”

“They’ve managed without us this long.” Steve’s voice comes out harsher than he intends—there’s so much blood—and Bucky stills again. “They can do it one last time. You’re more important, Buck. You’re the most important thing to me.”

Sam goes to get the first aid kit from his pack, and Bucky leans back, resting his head against the wall. His lips are stained deep red. Steve doesn’t know what to make of the look in his eyes. He just squeezes Bucky’s hand, repeating, “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

But the sour smell of vomit is heavy in the air, and Steve knows he’s not.

*

“Sam’s downstairs,” Steve says, slipping his phone in his pocket. He slides his arm through one strap on his pack. “You ready?”

Silence.

“Bucky? You ready?”

He hears gagging in the bedroom.

 _No._ Not again. 

Bucky hasn’t been sick in weeks. Not since the morning they last tried to leave. He’s been _fine._ He’s smiled, even laughed once. He’s fine, he has to be.

Steve’s heart is racing as he runs to the bedroom, every possibility burning through his mind worse than the last. Cancer. Some internal injury too deep for SHIELD to detect that’s been slowly tearing Bucky apart since Insight fell. A slow release poison embedded in the metal arm, a kill switch in case the Winter Soldier ever ran away.

He can’t lose Bucky again.

The door’s open now and Bucky’s back is to him, shoulders drawn up, gagging.

“Bucky!”

It isn’t until Steve turns him face to face that he sees.

Bucky’s hand is at his mouth. His fingers are down his throat.

Now he’s pulling free of Steve’s grip and Steve’s cold.

“Why—” he begins, but he can’t think of how to finish. His head is swimming. He barely sees Bucky flinch.

Instead, Steve sees Bucky’s pale face in the bathroom. His bloody mouth. The rest of the day spent with Bucky lying in bed, Steve refusing to leave his side. HYDRA had hostages, Tony told them later. One’s still in critical condition.

He sees the street where they played stickball growing up, remembers the time a game stopped short because he feel too dizzy and weak to go on. He’d ended up sitting on the pavement, head between his knees, heart racing, and a kid on the opposing team had shouted that it was an act. That Steve was just sore because he was losing.

Bucky had knocked out that kid’s teeth.

He sees the hospital from his worst asthma attack back in school, smells the cloying antiseptic in the air. The teacher had made him run laps with the rest of the class. Had told him that it was just in his head. Just an excuse to be lazy. Steve had felt like he was dying. His mother had to leave work to get him. She couldn’t afford that, but she’d done it. And Bucky, Bucky had shouted every insult and curse word he knew, had thrown a punch at the teacher, and he’d been kicked out of class. His parents hadn’t punished him.

He sees the Winter Soldier’s hand clamped around his throat, slamming him into the side of a van. The Soldier shooting at him on the helicarrier, punching again and again. He hadn’t played sick then.

And now Steve sees Bucky pulling his fingers from his mouth, gagging again at the motion. Nothing comes up. His eyes are wide. He looks like he’s stopped breathing.

Steve’s ears are ringing. His teeth feel bared. “You _coward._ ”

Bucky only steps back. His gaze drops to the floor like he knows he can’t defend it. Somehow that makes the boiling in Steve’s blood worse.

He wants to scream. He wants to grab Bucky and shake him hard enough to rattle his teeth in his skull. Wants to find the hospital where that hostage is comatose and drag Bucky there, rub his face into what happened while he was crying wolf.

But Sam’s waiting for him. The Avengers are waiting for him.

“I don’t have time for this.” His voice comes out cold, raw. His throat feels tight.

“Steve—”

He’s already walking away.

He tells Sam that Bucky’s sick. He doesn’t know what else to say.

*

Bucky’s sitting on the couch when Steve gets home, his knees drawn up against his body. He’s in the same clothes he had on when Steve left.

There are a million questions in Steve’s mind and he doesn’t know where to start. _Why_ and _how could you, do you know how scared I was, I thought you were_ dying, _why did you come home at all, why did you say you would help, how could you do this to me?_

He doesn’t speak at all. He doesn’t trust himself not to yell.

Bucky’s voice is so soft Steve has to strain to hear the words. “It won’t happen again.” He still can’t meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve nods. The silence hangs heavy as if one of them really is dying.

*

They sent Clint and Bucky ahead to scout the situation. The two of them walked straight into an ambush.

Clint hauled Bucky back to the jet on his shoulders. His own nose is broken, his ribs bruised, but Bucky got the worst of it. “Covering my dumb ass,” Clint had said. Bucky had insisted he could walk, but when he tried, he staggered and swayed, unable to move in a straight line.

Bruce has Bucky seated, shining a light in his face. One pupil dilates and doesn’t retract when the light shuts off. He sees four fingers when Bruce holds up two.

“You have a concussion.” Bruce moves the light to the side of his head. “And a ruptured ear drum. Your balance is shot.”

Bucky braces his hands against the armrests, trying to push himself up. “I’ve had worse. I can still fight.”

Bruce lays a hand against his chest. “I’ve had to tie up stubborn super soldiers before,” he says, glancing at Steve. “Please don’t make me do it again.”

When Bucky tenses, the plates in his arm grind and shift. “I can do it.” He looks right at Steve. “I can.”

“Listen to Bruce,” Steve orders.

“But—”

“You know how fast we heal. If you just _sit down_ —” Bucky’s struggling to get up again and Steve’s stare pins him to the seat—“then you’ll be able to help in a couple of hours. If you get yourself shot, you’ll be no use to anyone.”

Bucky’s face falls. He goes limp, his mismatched eyes staring down at the floor.

“Hey,” Clint says. He doesn’t continue until Bucky looks up. “You saved my life back there, okay? Just don’t run ahead again and then you won’t end up in time out.”

“I had them on the ropes,” Bucky mutters, and Steve’s heart aches.

“We know, Buck. We know.”

*

For the first time since Insight, there’s a mission that doesn’t involve HYDRA. A terrorist attack on the Myanmar embassy in DC, with dignitaries and employees taken hostage. It’s a quick operation with no causalities among the captives.

Steve’s comm crackles to life as he’s helping Sam cuff one of the terrorists.

“You clear?” Bucky asks.

“Second floor’s contained.” The cuffs snap in place and Steve steps back. “You?”

“Still sweeping the rooms up here, but we should be—”

Bucky cuts off. There’s a cry loud enough to blow out the mic, the edges of the sound bursting with static. A struggle.

“Go,” Sam says. “I’ve got—”

Steve’s already out the door.

The attacker’s dead by the time Steve finds Bucky slumped up against a desk. For a second that stretches into eternity, Steve thinks Bucky’s dead too. He’s ghostly white, impossibly white, and there’s more blood on the floor than Steve thought a body could contain. Bucky’s hands are clamped on his thigh, trying to stop the bleeding, but it’s still spraying out like a faucet and there’s _so much._

Steve shoves his hand inside of Bucky’s leg. His fingers dig into flesh until he finds the artery and grabs it, cutting off the flow. Bucky doesn’t react. He’s so pale, eyes half-shut, and Steve can’t _move._ He can’t even answer Sam’s questions over the comm.

He just stays there, holding Bucky together, until the paramedics have to force him off.

*

Bucky sinks back in the bed. There’s finally a hint of color back in his cheeks. He’s hooked up to a blood bag, his thigh wrapped in gauze, and he looks so fragile, so small. Smaller than Steve ever felt, even though that’s ridiculous.

“You think I can get another pillow?” he asks. His metal hand fumbles over the sheets until Sam finds the call button dangling off the side of the bed and hands it to him.

Steve’s knees are weak. He can still feel Bucky’s artery between his fingers, wet and pulsing.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “Steve. I’ve never felt better.” He smiles to prove his point, and his skin’s still nearly as white as his teeth.

Steve forces himself to smile back. “I’m gonna have to keep you on a leash next time, you klutz.” He can’t keep his voice from shaking despite his best efforts.

“Steve,” Bucky says again, seriously now. “I’ll be fine, okay? I’ll be out of here by morning, and then I can save your ass for old time’s sake. Return the favor.”

“Or maybe you won’t have to,” Sam offers. He pries the call button from Bucky’s hand when Bucky presses it again impatiently. “Maybe for once, all the shit trying to end the world will give us a week off. That’d be nice, right? My house is probably covered in a solid inch of dust right now.”

“Get a robot vacuum.” Bucky turns on his side, trying to swipe the button that Sam’s holding out of his reach.

“Well, I was gonna hire one, but he went and got himself stabbed.”

Bucky’s somehow managed to get Sam in a headlock by the time the nurse comes in. Natasha’s right behind her, and they roll their eyes in unison.

“Avenger or not,” the nurse tells Bucky, “I will sedate you.” She’s smiling.

“Okay, okay.” Reluctantly, he lets Sam go. “Just, can I get another pillow before you do?”

“Steve,” Nat says softly. “I need to show you something.”

“Can it wait?”

“No. It can’t.”

*

The security footage is grainy, the frame rate low, but what is shows is unmistakable.

Bucky disarms his would-be assailant in under a second. He stands there, hand on the man’s throat, easily holding him at arm’s length. He’s holding the knife in his other hand, and he looks over his body for a long moment before he jolts into action, driving the knife into his own leg.

That’s when he shouts. The terrorist tries to break free, kicking at the knife still buried in Bucky’s thigh, and Bucky snaps his neck.

Then he tears the knife out and collapses back, bleeding everywhere.

“The embassy found the footage.” Nat’s voice is low. “Tony’s talking to them now. Doing whatever he can to keep it from going public.”

Steve can only stare as the clip loops again and again. The static hums in his ears, deafeningly loud.

“He kept the bleeding stemmed until he knew help was coming,” Nat says. “I don’t think it was a suicide attempt.”

Steve’s voice is rough. It hurts to talk. “Then what the hell was it?”

“I don’t know.”

*

The nurse is cold when she brushes past Steve. In the time he’d been in the hall with Sam, trying to explain what he’d witnessed, Bucky’d managed to press the call button again, and he’d requested a second blanket.

When she was placing it on his bed, the nurse felt something under the sheets. Syringes. Steve doesn’t know when or where he stole them, or what he intended to do. But now the staff thinks he’s drug-seeking, and no one’s happy to have them around anymore.

Steve wishes Bucky were drug-seeking. He could understand that. He can’t make any sense of this.

“Have you ever heard of Munchausen syndrome?” Sam had asked in the hall, before the nurse started yelling.

Steve shook his head.

“I’m not surprised. I don’t think that’s the official name now anyway.” Sam shrugged. “It’s a mental illness. People with it make themselves sick or get hurt on purpose because they crave the reaction they get.”

The static was back in Steve’s ears again. “You’re telling me he almost died for _attention_?”

“Steve.” Sam’s gaze had been steady. “If he went that far for attention, something’s seriously wrong.”

“What were the syringes for?” Sam asks now. His voice is soft. There’s no judgment in it. Steve doesn’t understand how he does it.

Bucky’s staring at his lap, shoulders drawn in. He looks smaller than ever as he picks at the gauze on his thigh. “I was going to infect the stitches.”

“How?”

Steve’s biting his tongue bloody, like Bucky did when this first began. He wants to shout. Or cry. He can’t trust himself to speak.

“When I got up to go to the bathroom,” Bucky mutters. “I’d have put shit in them and injected that in the cut.”

Steve’s stomach lurches.

“Otherwise it would have healed too fast.” His voice is barely a whisper now.

“ _Why?_ ” Sam’s hand is on Steve’s wrist as soon as he says it. He knows it’s not helpful, but he can’t stop himself. Every night since they captured Zola, every night for _years_ , he’s dreamed of Bucky falling, remembered the horror in his face when Steve couldn’t hold him.

And now he’s here and he’s _alive_ and he almost stopped his own heart and Steve can’t understand _why._

Bucky hangs his head, hair blocking his face. He’s pale again despite the transfusion. “I don’t want to be the Soldier.”

“You don’t have to be,” Sam tells him. “We’re not HYDRA. You have a choice.”

“And then what?” Bucky’s voice is thick. Steve thinks he’s crying. “Then I hide forever because if the world knows I’m alive, they’ll lock me up because I’m not making up for what I did? I just live in Steve’s apartment and we don’t even talk because I can’t remember how to be his friend and we just—just _exist_ together until he starts to hate me?”

“I don’t hate you!” Steve bolts up, his hands on the foot of the bed. He doesn’t know if he wants to hug Bucky or shake him. He just wants to grab him, like he couldn’t on the train.

“You don’t _like_ me!” Bucky’s eyes are rimmed with red. “You don’t see me! You only ever smile for real if I remember something and I never remember anything and I hurt all the time and I don’t want to tell you because you’re already sad! And when I made myself throw up, you took care of me, and it was like I could—I could just be _sick_ and you didn’t expect anything! If I got hurt bad enough, HYDRA didn’t make me fight. And if I was sick enough, I didn’t have to be your Bucky. What was I supposed to do?”

He’s worked the dressing around his stitches loose and now he’s scratching frantically at the cut. He doesn’t even seem aware of it. Steve’s heard of animals gnawing off their limbs to escape traps. He didn’t know he was locking Bucky up in a prison of his memories. And he doesn’t know how to free him.

He grabs Bucky’s hands to make the scratching stop. “You are my Bucky. No matter what. I didn’t mean to make you feel like you weren’t. Don’t hurt yourself. Please. I need you to be okay.”

“You don’t have to be the Winter Soldier,” Sam says. “We won’t make you, and anyone else with an opinion can fuck off. You don’t have to hurt yourself. What you’re doing is dangerous.”

In Steve’s hands, Bucky’s fingers are grasping, his nails raking across Steve’s palms. He’s still trying to scratch. “I can’t stop.”

Steve hugs him, trapping his arms between their bodies. He holds tight, trying to drink in the scent of Bucky, the texture of the scar tissue around his shoulder beneath the hospital gown, the soft touch of his hair against Steve’s face. He can’t lose him again. “We’ll help you. I’ll help. It’s okay, Bucky. It’ll be okay.”

Sam’s still talking, something about setting up a doctor’s appointment. Steve barely hears him. Bucky’s nails are digging into his stomach, and Steve just holds tighter like he can hug it all better. “It’s okay.” He can feel Bucky’s breath against his ear, ragged and scared. “You’re okay. I’ll keep you safe. You’re okay, Bucky. You’re okay.”

He’s not, and Steve isn’t either. Steve’s trembling and sick himself, and laughably far from okay. He’s drowning. But Bucky saved him from drowning before, and now he has to return the favor. He grabs Bucky’s hands again, holding and stroking them and kissing at his fingers, promising to fix things, until the scratching finally stops.

“You’re okay,” Steve keeps repeating, as if he can force reality to fit his words. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s okay.”

It’s not okay. But it’ll get better.

It has to.

**Author's Note:**

> The story title comes from Aesop's fable ["The Ass and the Load of Salt."](https://americanliterature.com/author/aesop/short-story/the-ass-and-the-load-of-salt)
> 
> Munchausen's syndrome is formally known as [Factitious disorder imposed on self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_self). Bucky's idea with the syringes was inspired by [an interview](https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2100-i-injected-myself-with-poop-to-get-sick-5-realities.html) with a woman suffering from the disorder.


End file.
